


the way we weren't

by danveresque



Series: all the lives we/never lived [1]
Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-17 05:51:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21049367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danveresque/pseuds/danveresque
Summary: The kid looked like a right chav with a bit of a toothy grin. You idiot, Robert thought, feeling inexplicably overcome.





	the way we weren't

Robert’s tracker took him to a garage, and he walked in just as a pair of idiots started discussing the dismantling of his car.

“I don’t negotiate with idiots,” he told them, when they attempted to reason with him. One of them, Ross, he seemed the shiftier of the two, the brains of the operation. The other one? Robert didn’t even remember his name. Aidan or Adam or something.

Anyway, he needed a couple of dumb monkeys for the odd job and they would do. Of course, there was always a drawback to hiring morally corrupt individuals. When he got them to break in at Home Farm and rob the place, they took a ring that belonged to Chrissie’s mum.

Robert had wanted to get his own back, maybe elevate himself a little in Lawrence’s eyes, but he hadn’t meant to hurt Chrissie. But the ring is gone. So that was that. Ross and What’s His Face definitely weren’t the type to do the right thing. There was no point in appealing to their sense of goodness.

Thinking about Chrissie turned his thoughts turn to Sarah. He often wondered if she’d been around still, maybe he might have been a different person. So much happened after she died, so much happened because she died, because he was angry.

He went to visit her grave, laying flowers on it. He told her, “I miss you.”

She remained dead, as the dead often did, but he found he didn’t want to leave her just yet. There was someone else in the graveyard, standing solemnly over a grave. Chas from the Woolpack. He remembered her from years back. Another gobby Dingle. Though, here, she seemed different. Like a bleached version of her self.

She had tidied the grave and laid down some flowers, lips trembling. Kissing her fingertips, she pressed them to the grave and then left, finally shedding tears as she went, Robert watching the whole time. He decided to leave too, passing the grave she’d been visiting. He looked at it and found it belonged to an Aaron Livesy. _Beloved son._

Robert looked in Chas’s direction. _Shit_, he thought. This was her boy. He remembered the kid with his dark mop of almost spiky hair. Damn it, he’d died way too young by the looks of it. Robert shook his head, feeling a strange pang of grief for this lad he never knew. Maybe the grief was really for his mum and his dad, it was hard to tell. All he knew was, he hated the sight of this grave.

He spent the afternoon in a strange mood, a heavy weight in his chest that felt like unspent grief. He missed his mum today, more so than usual. He couldn’t stop thinking of her. With her, he couldn’t stop thinking of Chas standing there over her son’s grave.

“Sorry to disturb you, but I was looking for Lawrence.” Robert flinched, looking up to find Nicola in the doorway of the kitchen, not looking sorry about anything. She seemed pleased to have caught him daydreaming.

He thought about making a joke about how she couldn’t help but being disturbing, but instead sat back and said, “You know Chas Dingle, don’t you?”

She curled her lip in that way she did when she thought everyone other than her was as dull as dishwater. “Well, I wouldn’t say we’re bosom buddies. Why? What do you want with her? One older woman not enough?”

Robert rolled his eyes. “I saw her at the graveyard, that’s all.”

Nicola seemed to sober up immdiately. “Oh. Right. Yeah, she was probably visiting her son’s grave.”

Robert nodded. “What happened? He was quite young wasn’t he?”

She hesitated, but then sighed and said, “You’re bound to find out anyway. He killed himself. Family’s never admitted it, but rumour is he was gay and couldn’t handle it.”

Robert’s heartbeat seemed to become heavy, thick and loud in his chest and his ears. He stomach turned at the thought of some kid offing himself because he was..._damn it._

“You alright?” Nicola asked. “You look a bit peaky.”

Robert nodded. “Must have been something I ate.”

The tight feeling in his gut remained for the remainder of the day. He went online, did a bit of searching, found a photograph in a small article about a local lad committing suicide in the garage where he worked. The kid looked like a right chav with a bit of a toothy grin. _You idiot_, Robert thought, feeling inexplicably overcome.

No. It wasn’t inexplicable though, was it? He knew, you didn’t have to die. You could just lie to yourself, shut down a whole part of yourself, keep going. _What did you have to kill yourself for_, he thought angrily at this stupid dead kid.

Chrissie found him at the kitchen counter, hunched over his laptop. She stopped, looking concerned. “Are you okay?”

He nodded at her, pulling up a practiced smile, swallowing and telling her, “Yeah. Now that you’re back.”

She smiled and went to him, putting her arms around his shoulders. He held her tight. If she felt it was a little too tight, she said nothing.

## *

Septicemia they said. Too late they said.

Robert had found Aaron’s car on the road, half in a ditch, Aaron curled over the steering wheel. He rushed to it, his heart in his mouth, smashing the window and opening the door.

“Aaron!” he cried. “Aaron!”

Aaron didn’t move. He looked awful. Robert pulled him from the car, bundling him into his own car and rushing him to hospital.

Blood had seeped through Aaron’s sleeve. When Robert looked for the cause, he found a deep cut that looked infected.

“What do you mean it’s too late?” he asked, his voice unsteady.

“I’m sorry. Your friend didn’t make it,” the doctor said.

“He’s not-” Robert said, tears in his eyes. “He’s not my friend.”

## *

“I don’t understand,” Vic said, inconsolable. She couldn’t wipe the tears away quick enough they were falling so fast. “You said…you said Aaron was stuck under the steering column and _couldn’t _get out. But Robert wasn’t.”

The detective inspector looked to her partner and then back at Vic, nodding. “That’s right.”

“So then...so then I don’t understand why he couldn’t get out.”

“Mrs Barton. We believe it’s not a case that he couldn’t. We think he chose not to.”

Adam’s hold around Vic’s shoulders loosened as he quietly said, “You what?”

“We think your brother-in-law stayed in the car by choice.” Vic stared at the woman before her. She seemed to steady her breath before telling Vic, “We think he stayed behind trying to save his boyfriend and as a consequence also drowned.”

“No,” Vic said, shaking her head. “You’re trying to tell me he could have gotten out but..._let_ himself drown?”

Next to her, Adam slumped and said. “It was Aaron in there. Of course he did.”

## *

Aaron stood outside the hospital room, his hands over his mouth. Inside the room, there were nurses and two doctors standing over Robert’s bed as the machines he was attached to wailed in distress. The doctors were shouting instructions Aaron couldn’t quite make out. Not that he needed to understand the words to know what was happening.

He shook his head. “No. Robert.”

It looked like they were trying to restart his heart now, his body jerking up from the bed with each jolt after someone yelled, “Clear!”

“I’m sorry,” Aaron sobbed breathlessly. “I didn’t mean it. Don’t die. Please don’t die.”

But it didn’t matter. Because he’d gone in there and he’d said it. He told Robert to just hurry up and die and that’s exactly what he was doing.

## *

It was funny how Adam seemed completely uninterested in what Aaron was saying until Aaron brought up Adam’s favourite haunted barn. He’d been talking about the few spots he’d taken Ed around to, just to hang out in private, and _maybe_ other stuff, but Adam had been scowling at someone on the otherside of the pub, not listening.

Until, Aaron said, “Oh yeah, we also fooled around a bit in that scary barn of yours.”

Adam finally looked at him, shocked. “Oh you didn’t, mate. Don’t tell me you and Ed got it on in that barn.”

Adam looked appalled, stopping Aaron from grinning ear to ear. He laughed and said, “What? Don’t tell me, it’s a homophobic barn.”

“Mate, that barn took out a whole family,” Adam said, with horror story seriousness.

“You what?”

“I’m telling ya. The family that owned our place before, the Sugdens. They all died in a barn fire. Well, all of them except Andy and his sister Vic,” Adam said. “It was rebuilt before the place was put up for sale again, but that place gives me the flipping creeps.”

Aaron grinned. “Are you telling me you think it’s haunted?”

“No. I’m just saying there’s something not right about that place,” Adam said. “Think about it though. Jack Sugden, his wife, and his son, all died there. That’s a recipe for a haunting, innit?”

Aaron hunched in on himself he laughed so hard. “Right. Well, no, me and Ed did not go at it in your barn, but I’m thinking I might take you up on the challenge now.”

“You’re an idiot,” Adam said. “Don’t come running to me if you randomly get suffocated by a bale of hay of something.”

“What is wrong with you?” Aaron asked, shaking his head.

He was still laughing about it later as him and Ed made their way back from Bar West. “I’m telling you, he’s dead serious.”

Ed, always refusing to be anything but the definition of chilled out, smiled and said, “Well, I’m willing to experiment if you are. You know. For science.”

Aaron looked at him, grinning hard. “Right. For science is it?”

“It won’t be without its benefits,” Ed said in his usual cool collected manner, his gaze drifting up and down Aaron’s body, making him feel warm all over. Sometimes Aaron couldn’t quite believe it that despite all his scars, here was someone who still wanted him the way Ed did.

“Alright,” Aaron said. “For science then.”

They went straight there, creeping into the barn whilst finding the whole thing way too funny, falling against each other laughing. There were a few dim lights on inside, enough to keep the shadows shadowy and the bays of hay glowing soft and golden.

Ed made a grab for Aaron immediately, pulling him close and drawing him into a kiss. It was all fine until the lights flickered and they both jumped apart. Aaron looked at Ed, laughing. “Are you scared?”

“No,” Ed said, just a little defensive.

“Oh my god, you are,” Aaron said with a laugh. “I wouldn’t worry. It’s probably just rats.”

He pulled on Ed’s jacket, drawing him close until they were both falling back onto a bale of hay, kissing slowly, hands roaming over each other until Ed’s hands came up to frame his face, holding it. Aaron kissed him back, but suddenly felt strange about being here. Haunted or not, he shouldn’t have come here. Not with Ed.

He pushed Ed away, feeling stupid. Ed frowned. “What?”

Shaking his head, Aaron said, “Let’s go back to mine. I don’t really fancy getting hay in all sorts of places.”

Ed grinned. “Now who’s scared?”

“I’m not,” Aaron said quietly. “It’s just...just feels a bit disrespectful. You know. Someone died here.”

Ed had a soft look in eyes, and a softer smile. He got up and pulled Aaron along. “Okay. I wouldn’t say no to a nice warm bed.”

They left sharpish. Now that they had decided to go, the barn _did_ feel creepy, filled with things that Aaron couldn’t see, but was sure he could feel. As he was about to leave, Aaron couldn’t help but look back into the empty space, wondering why he fully expected to see someone waiting there.


End file.
